Mai-Kai Polynesian Revue

Fort Lauderdale's tiki palace, back on stage

⏱ 2 - 3 hours👤 All ages$$

Few Florida restaurants carry as much accumulated atmosphere as this one. The building is a stage set in the best sense: thatched rooflines, carved tiki figures, waterfall ponds, lanterns and a walkway from the parking area textured to look like sand. The Thornton brothers built it in the mid-1950s at the height of America's tiki craze, and rather than trade it in for something modern, the owners spent four years and more than twenty million dollars restoring it. That investment shows in how the dining rooms feel: each themed space has its own character, and the Samoa and Tahiti rooms are the ones to know if you want dinner without the stage show.

The revue itself is a cultural-arts production led by the venue's arts director, with Pacific Island dance, drumming and costume work moving through the program and fire performers closing it. Shows run twice nightly, so you will want to decide early which seating you are after and plan arrival time around it. The Molokai Bar is the other main draw: a room built for rum drinkers, with specialty cocktails served in custom glassware you can buy to take home. The food menu leans toward Polynesian-inspired and Asian-influenced plates, with items such as Peking duck, barbecue ribs and a pupu platter among the house favorites.

Practical craft: this is an evening activity, so plan your day around it rather than squeezing it between beach hours. Take the show-admission ticket as your starting point and decide separately how you want to handle dinner and drinks, since the dining rooms and the bar are a part of the experience, not an afterthought. Expect it to be popular in winter season and on weekends. It pairs naturally with a Water Taxi or harbor cruise earlier in the day, and the hotels clustered along 17th Street put you within a very short ride of the door. It suits couples, groups of friends and families with older children who can sit through a longer evening.